Hermaphrodite

Paw Tracks; 2007

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Though the timing and connections that made it happen are pretty clear, it's still hard to fathom how a band as sonically prickly as Black Dice got so popular. Their music has always been stubborn and hard to pin down, full of curious dodges and spiky resistance. Often they slyly skirt some elusive sweet spot, hovering around the place you think they're headed without ever arriving there. As Dominique Leone wrote in his Pitchfork review of Broken Ear Record, "there's always something a little uncomfortable about Black Dice-- but then they wouldn't be as interesting otherwise." Even the band's least successful tracks hold a fascinating tension-- but they aren't exactly crowd-pleasing.

It may be misleading to say that Hermaphrodite, the first solo album by Black Dice's Eric Copeland, is catchier than anything his band has done. After all, it's a noisy, predominantly abstract record. But there's a joyful swing and pleasant ease to Copeland's work here that no Black Dice album has quite caught. Rather that darting around implied destinations, Copeland is happy to settle into grooves, picking simple patterns and letting them blissfully churn away. The result is music that you can actually nod your head to, even when it challenges your grey matter.

Hermaphrodite's accessibility comes not just from its simplicity, but also its playfulness. Through bouncy rhythmic loops, sprightly vocal chants, and child-like melodies, Copeland crafts pieces that feel sunny and breezy even at their roughest. In that sense Hermaphrodite evokes Gang Gang Dance's early séances and Animal Collective's brighter rain dances. But it's even closer to the wide-eyed art loops of the Residents. Copeland captures that seminal outfit's primal beauty on tracks like "Wash Up", with its warped vocals and bubbly synths, and "FKD", with sneaky whines so Residents-like you can practically follow the bouncing eyeball.

Still, Copeland has an understated humor all his own. On "La Booly Boo", he melts tribal field recordings into a stoned, gleeful mush. Later, the ping-pong percussion of "Tree Aliens" sounds like cartoon sound effects in an echo chamber, and the goofy hook of "Spacehead" hypnotizes. One could perhaps fault Hermaphrodite for a slight sameness, as adjoining tracks sometimes blur together. But maybe that's just a testament to the subtlety of Copeland's work. As simple and bright as many of these pieces are, none of them scream at you, instead approaching at off-angles and sloping curves. And besides, this is only Copeland's first solo record, and the forthcoming Black Dice album will be only their fourth. Both have plenty of time to diversify, and Hermaphrodite is a decidedly strong shot in that direction.